The Futures We Build – a playbook for long-term thinking

The Futures We Build A playbook for long-term thinking

The choice is ours We’re in the business of permanence, yet we often design as though the future is informed by the present. Buildings intended to last a century rest on foundations shaped for a world that is already reshaping itself.

Strategic foresight helps to close that gap – not by predicting the future, but by expanding our ability to imagine and shape it. It means asking “what if?” before we commit, testing possibilities before we build, and approaching our work with humility for what we cannot yet know.

To tackle these challenges, Perkins&Will’s London studio, Portland, and the Royal College of Art’s superFUTURES Lead Gem Barton hosted a three-part roundtable series.

Clients, partners, designers, changemakers, and business leaders came together, stepping outside their silos to ask the harder questions about the future of the built environment.

Across these conversations, a clear pattern emerged: we’ve designed away many of the conditions people need to flourish. This playbook distills seven opportunities that call on us to rethink how we build. They ask us to welcome friction, see loneliness as a spatial concern, make room for emptiness and play, treat art as infrastructure, prototype the future, and remain devoted to spaces long after the ribbon-cutting.

We have more agency than we think. The spaces we create can either fragment or connect, limit or inspire, isolate or bring people together. The future we build will depend on the questions we’re willing to ask right now.

The choice is ours.

— Elisa Cecilli, Strategic Foresight, Senior Associate at Perkins&Will and Portland 1—The futures we build

“If built space edits life, then through their decisions architects, designers, urban planners and their clients write the terms of belonging – who is protected, who is exposed, what is welcomed, what is erased. This is not a compliment. It’s a responsibility.

This playbook came out of a year of shared thinking between practice and education – roundtables introducing uncertainty as a design material. It gathers seven prompts for designing space as more than function, asking what a place makes socially, emotionally, culturally possible. What follows isn’t a manifesto or a trend report. It is a set of provocations designed to unsettle the default brief and to prototype future values before we pour them into concrete.”

Gem Barton, Academic and Author, Reader in Design Pedagogy and Head of superFUTURES at the Royal College of Art, Founder at Office of Speculative Spatial Design (O-SSD)

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05

21

Introduction

What if our great-grandchildren had to live with our design choices?

Be a playstarter

What if agency mattered more than perfection?

09

25

Break the algorithm bubble What if great design isn’t always meant to be frictionless?

Champion arts on prescription

What if art is as essential a utility as plumbing?

Contribu 37 3—The futures we build

The choice is ours. Your turn.

Seven questions. Seven cards.

41

Contributors

Special guests, facilitators and participants.

Embrace

13

Design for collective effervescence

17

29

Engage beyond the ribbon-cutting

33

What if loneliness is a shared design problem?

What if opening day wasn’t the finish line, but the starting gun?

Emptiness

As

Infrastructure

Embrace emptiness as infrastructure

What if overstimulation is the design flaw?

Prototype the Future

What if change was built in from the start?

A playbook for long-term thinking—4

What if our greatgrandchildren had to live with our design choices?

According to the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), civic structures typically have an intended design life of 100-120 years.

But there’s a fundamental tension between planning for a 100-year future, while being guided by design directions informed by today’s norms, demographics, family structures and work patterns. Looking forward just 25 years to 2050, the United Nations (UN) projects the percentage of people living in urban environments will rise from 52% to 68%, while the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that the proportion of the world’s population aged over 60 will nearly double from 12% to 22%. At the same time, the findings of Diego Alburez-Gutiérrez’s Kinship Inequalities research group suggest that family sizes will reduce significantly by the end of the century, as the idea of the nuclear family will become obsolete.

These projections give us a glimpse of the types of potential demographic and societal changes that lie ahead, and the UN’s 2024 Declaration on Future Generations suggests a solution for how we should plan for them. It calls for a fundamental shift in the way we prepare for what lies ahead by including the needs and interests of next generations into policy and decision-making.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres puts it: “We cannot create a future fit for our grandchildren with a system built by our grandparents.”

This same guiding principle must also be used in designing built environments intended to thrive for the next century, forcing us to consider: “What if our great-grandchildren had to live with our design choices?”

Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is already starting to think this way with the launch of its Horizons 2034 foresight programme.

And this was the starting point for our roundtable conversations that inspired the insights in this playbook. They challenge us to question inherited assumptions, to design for adaptability and emergence, and to create locations that don’t just shelter bodies but nurture communities, spark unexpected joy, and leave room for the magic that happens when people come together.

The insights highlight the positive role that the spaces we inhabit can play in addressing societal problems by fostering social collision, art, and collective experiences. They also position design as an ongoing conversation, challenging us to find new ways to co-create tomorrow in collaboration with our communities.

5—The futures we build

“

As designers and developers in the built environment, we hold a huge responsibility to make the best use of scarce resources, to do more with less and to shape spaces and places not just for today or tomorrow, but for future generations. Places which foster community, wellbeing and joy, which are loved by their users and designed to evolve will endure and transcend the creeping dominance of the virtual world. Those are the places we aspire to shape.”

Jo Wright, Managing Director at Perkins&Will, London

“

Futures in an organisation is not a job description, it’s a culture. I am delighted that the ‘spaces for’ roundtables can play a small part in providing a catalyst for futures thinking. A space to hear different perspectives and consider challenges across sectors. This will enable a shift from being responsive businesses to predictive ones.”

Ibrahim Ibrahim, Managing Director at Portland and Visiting Professor at Cardiff University & Welsh School of Architecture

A playbook for long-term thinking—6

These pro are invita think diff 7—The futures we build

ovocations ations to fferently A playbook for long-term thinking—8

What if great design isn’t always meant to be frictionless?

Break the algorithm bubble In the age of hyperpersonalisation, algorithmic curation creates comfortable bubbles rather than experiences that challenge us and inspire growth. Built environments have an opportunity to nourish people by designing intentional moments of grit and healthy friction.

9—The futures we build

University College London’s Professor of Global Politics, Brian Klaas, in his 2024 book Fluke, highlights the profound ability of random, everyday encounters and decisions to have a transformational impact on humans. “The arbitrary, the accidental, the chaos of life matters a lot more than we imagine,” he argues.

From a design perspective, this necessitates the need to allow for unexpected and spontaneous moments, rather than being led by relentless optimisation.

Spanish coffee chain GoodNews emphasises the value of unplanned, real-world conversations with strangers by offering free drinks and upgrades to customers who tell the barista a rumour, a secret, a piece of gossip, or who tell a joke to the person behind them in the queue.

Deliberately designing against efficiency and creating micro moments of strategic inconvenience where people need to communicate with others can benefit our health. This is confirmed by a 2024 paper called Improving social connections with weak ties and strangers from the University of North Carolina Department of Psychology and Neuroscience which found that “people’s interactions with … weak ties and strangers contributes to wellbeing”. In parallel, in a recent article for Noema magazine, writer Lisa Bubert posits that social friction – being confronted with people unlike ourselves, who do not share our lifestyle or world view – is “essential to our collective wellbeing”, helping us to replace mistrust and fear with understanding and acceptance.

Looking forward, the need for shared spaces that allow us to reclaim our own attention and encounter people who challenge our thinking will become ever more important as digital echo chambers threaten to splinter society along gender, generational, and political lines. Indeed, global research from Dazed Media and Ipsos shows that women and men in Gen Z are becoming increasingly divided on key issues such as politics, cultural views and gender equality.

Similarly, recent research from Starling Strategy and Tapestry highlights the rise of these algorithmic chambers that have sorted men and women into “increasingly separate, antagonistic digital spaces.”

The risk going forward is that our physical environments will simply mirror this, exacerbating division and polarisation. We should, therefore, consider “social collision” as a critical system for the future, one that can facilitate the cross-pollination of ideas and views, giving individuals the impetus to expand their thinking.

A playbook for long-term thinking—10

The built environme to act as our problem us out of our bubbles, offering spaces that p friction, not a worl

11—The futures we build

ent needs matic ally that breaks , encouraging and promote healthy rld stripped of it.

Annie Auerbach, Co-Founder at Starling Strategy and Author of FLEX: Reinventing Work for a Smarter, Happier Life

A playbook for long-term thinking—12

What if

Lonel i ness is a shared design problem?

13—The futures we build

Design for collective effervescence A landmark 2025 report from the World Health Organisation finds that 1 in 6 people worldwide are affected by loneliness.

Social connection can have a “profound impact on health, educational, and economic outcomes,” according to Dr Vivek Murthy, Co-Chair of WHO’s Commission into the subject. Yet, we often prioritise efficiency in our design over moments of shared joy, energy and belonging, sometimes referred to as collective effervescence.

With the UN agency calling loneliness a “global public health concern”, it is time to consider how enriching shared experiences can move beyond the confines of occasional concerts, protests or celebrations, and become embedded into the everyday infrastructure of our communities. “We are yearning for emotional connection, for spaces that touch something deeper,” according to Marie Stafford, Global Director at VML Intelligence, whose The Age of Re-enchantment report in 2023 explored this topic in depth.

Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey shows that younger Americans are already spending 45% more time alone than in 2010.

According to Common Sense Media, 72% of US teens have also turned to AI for companionship, which suggests the need for moments of human connection could be even greater in the years ahead, particularly if remote and hybrid working continues to abound.

Faced with the reality that loneliness and isolation could become a more prevalent part of life, we must change our approach to designing for meaningful group experiences. These should not be viewed as an occasional, nice-to-have amenity, but as a pressing public health imperative and an opportunity to carve out a competitive advantage.

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We need more visceral encount that remind us that we ar part of somethin than just our

15—The futures we build

ters

re ng bigger urselves.

Marie Stafford, Global Director at VML Intelligence

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What if overstimulation is the design flaw?

Embrace

Emptiness

However, the consequence of systematically designing out every gap is the removal of crucial, restorative and impactful moments of pause.

Research from Princeton University shows that people had three hours of extra free time per week in 2019 than in 1965, yet 80% still report being “always busy”, as we fill these minutes with digital distraction. Allowing ourselves to be bored is critical for brain health, according to neuroscientist Alicia Walf. During boredom, while the body performs mindless tasks, the brain wanders freely, processing past experiences and imagining future 17—The futures we build

When designing in an age of omnipresent digital connection, there’s a tendency to eliminate waiting, wandering and wondering from daily life, and replace them with constant input, direction and stimulation.

As

applications. An article by youth mental health specialists Daniel Hermens and Michelle Kennedy explains: “In small doses, boredom is the necessary counterbalance to the overstimulated world in which we live. It can offer unique benefits for our nervous system and our mental health.”

Thus, it is time to reframe how we consider boredom and emptiness. No longer should it be viewed as something to be fixed but embraced as an essential foundational element for cognitive health. In addition, as we learn more about the nuance of mental health and neurodiversity, including how different types of

Infrastructure

stimulation affect people differently, we need to consider how low stimulus moments support accessibility and inclusivity.

As we move towards the 2030s, a time when mixed reality could immerse us in personalised content around the clock, the need for spaces that invite boredom, pause, and mental reset will only grow. Instead of filling every moment, we should boldly design for emptiness – treating it as a feature, not a flaw.

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19—The futures we build

The creative mind needs unstructured wandering time, a space to drift, think and make unexpected connections. However, we have designed out every gap, filling voids with screens and engineered ‘experiences’.

There is a growing need for and importance of being present with each other within the built environment.

Chance Marshall, Creative Psychotherapist and Author of How to Grow Through What You Go Through

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21—The futures we build

than

Play is a fundamental aspect of being human, encouraging us to explore possibilities, test boundaries and co-create meaning.

We’ve largely reserved play for children’s zones and experiential pop-ups, but it has the potential to have a greater impact. The British Psychological Society says we are in “the golden age of play for adults” revealing that the benefits of engaging in playful activities can include “stimulating creative thinking, encouraging exploration, relieving stress, and fostering positive social interaction”.

Having permission to experiment and feeling agency to express yourself also fundamentally changes the way we think about a space. Rather than thinking of the environments we build as “finished” once we’ve completed them, we should consider how they can take on the role of play starters. Like blank canvases, they should invite new interpretations rather than dictate experience. Through design, they encourage people to explore their own desire paths, providing them a greater sense of ownership and agency over a space and its development. Unilever’s 2025 interpretation of its Dirt Is Good campaign in Turkey illustrates design’s potential to support imagination.

Its ground level Out-of-Home (OOH) billboards feature football goals and basketball hoops, doubling as an invitation for locals to engage and leave their mark.

As our work and daily lives become increasingly AI-mediated, automated and optimised by technology, creativity and adaptability may emerge as our defining value proposition as humans.

Within this context, built environments that enable playful experimentation and co-creation won’t just provide delightful, rewarding experiences for visitors, they will also become essential training grounds for people to explore the potential of their creativity. In this sense, play could shift from a recreational amenity into a core element of economic models that primes people with the type of flexible, creative thinking they will need to thrive.

Be a play starter

A playbook for long-term thinking—22

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23—The futures we build

an experience- the built environment at spark imagination d make room for play.

Filippo Cuttica, Design and Futures Director, Co-creator of The Futures Bazaar: A Public Imagination Toolkit

A playbook for long-term thinking—24

25—The futures we build

Champion arts on prescription The transformational impact of art and culture in built environments is only just gaining broader recognition.

Historically, public art has often been positioned as discretionary spending, but it is now increasingly being recognised as a strategic investment in placemaking. At the same time, neuroscientists are beginning to champion exposure to culture as an antidote to anxiety, depression and other mental health struggles.

This potential is increasingly being recognised in healthcare: US-based health scientist Tasha Golden has created what she calls an Arts of Prescription Field Guide. This operates as a road map for how art, culture and nature can be integrated into public spaces and health care systems to improve health and wellbeing.

Art can deliver visceral interactions of joy to those who experience it. But it can also be used to create memorable gathering spots and visual landmarks that orient and anchor a space, laying the foundations for shared community identity. Take the 21-foot-tall Phoebe the Flamingo sculpture at Tampa International Airport. It is at once a monumental structure that brings excitement and awe to those who are present, while also playing a crucial placemaking and wayfinding role in the space; “I’ll see you by the pink flamingo”.

Globally, populations are aging, according to the WHO and the Centre for Aging Better, while mental health needs are continuing to grow. As healthcare systems around the world come under increasing strain from these stressors in the years ahead, artson-prescriptions models are likely to move from pilot programmes testing viability into established practices that are embedded in our societies, making arts not just a cultural amenity, but a recognised element of preventative healthcare.

In parallel to this, we must embrace the potential of public art to improve mental health outcomes.

The UK government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) reports that involvement in arts generates £8bn in societal benefit annually through improved quality of life and productivity.

Driven by these benefits, cultural engagement should now be considered an important design tool for both improving wellbeing outcomes and driving differentiating commercial agendas.

What if art is as essential a utility as plumbing?

A playbook for long-term thinking—26

Art is not a luxury o It is a catalyst for us to dream while understanding of th It enriches our con stories and nourish

Mijail Gu Design D at Perki 27—The futures we build

or mere decoration. meaning, inviting e challenging our he world around us. ntinually unfolding hes our well-being.

utierrez, Director ins&Will A playbook for long-term thinking—28

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Engage beyond the ribbon-cutting

Traditionally, with commercial pressures naturally focusing attention on the build phase, handover has often been regarded as an end point for design planning.

But as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) requirements and social value mandates are tightening globally, there is an increasing need to embed longerterm thinking and ongoing stewardship into our design strategies that consider life beyond the launch.

The World Green Council’s Social Impact across the Built Environment report confirms that by 2030, developers and designers will increasingly need to demonstrate the long-term social impact of their spaces alongside their financial returns. Within this shift, the gatekeepers to insurance, financing, and planning approval are likely to show a growing interest in post-occupancy commitments and performance data.

In this context, we must embrace the concept of “placetending”, or the practice of ongoing, intentional and planned engagement as well as shaping of a space, as a core part of the development model. “As designers, we need to understand that the end of our project is the start of the real project - the life of the space that we have created,” explains Adam Strudwick, Principal at Perkins&Will. “We need to move to an ‘OpEx’ resource approach where we put as much design thinking, effort and resources into a building’s full use and lifespan.”

A critical aspect of this approach will be understanding what success means and which metrics should be tracked and used as a barometer of positive progress.

Commercial success has long been an important and easily trackable indicator, while the importance of sustainability credentials continues to rise. But going forwards it may be necessary to prove the long-term impact of indicators such as happiness levels, health outcomes, social mobility and the synergy between diverse user groups.

Early movers may establish competitive advantage in the marketplace of tomorrow, so now is the time for organisations to embed place-tending into their strategic design approach. One important element of this will be creating an infrastructure that enables thoughtful, ongoing curation. This means ensuring the experience evolves and changes to meet the needs and aspirations of the community, while offering moments of excitement, delight and intention.

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“Beyond building and curating places that extract value from the metrics of attention and belonging, the next frontier is building and curating audience intimacy. When relationships are nourished by hyperpersonalised content, intimacy becomes the engine of a new value system: the Intention Economy. This shift moves places beyond fulfilling wants to anticipating desires.”

Lewis Allen, Director at Portland

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And while the future may be uncertain, rather than simply planning for it, we can also start to prototype it. Rather than waiting for new solutions to emerge, we can take a proactive approach by creating experimental “living lab” environments to test, refine and co-create the next generation of communities.

What if change was built in from the start?

The utility of built environments and the needs of people in them will evolve significantly in the years ahead.

How we address complex societal challenges often remains abstract in policy documents and research papers, creating a gap between analysis and action. This is why London-based consultancy The Liminal Space uses physical activations to challenge traditional approaches and suggest alternatives that work better for the people who use them. Its Night Club project, for example, explored new approaches to solving night-shift workers’ health challenges via a travelling pop-up installation where workers could directly experience the solutions. This translates research into tangible interventions while gathering real-world insights from the people most affected. According to Sarah Douglas, Director at The Liminal Space, this collaborative element, using immersive, hands-on experiences to develop solutions with communities as active participants, is the key to successful prototyping.

The merit of using living lab environments and prototyping techniques to test solutions before permanent roll out is supported by empirical and academic research. A 2022 study from the University of Amsterdam on the use of living labs for healthcare innovation found the approach led to stronger stakeholder buy-in and sense of ownership, concluding: “The living lab approach showed to contribute to successful implementation outcomes.” Cambridge University’s Prototyping, experimentation, and piloting in the business model context suggests a reason for the success, finding that prototyping “provides valuable insights on what works, in what circumstances, and how people will likely use them”. “When considering the built environment, we must view place as a living, breathing organism that can adapt to the changing cultural, social and technological landscape,” argues Ibrahim Ibrahim, MD at Portland and Visiting Professor at Cardiff University & the Welsh School of Architecture. He also invites designers to rethink how they imagine environments: “This calls for a ‘people-centric’ and not a ’space-centric’ approach to place. To shift from the physicality of space to the emotion of place. Where we consider not just short-term outputs, but longer-term outcomes and impacts.”

Looking forward, having the capacity to create participatory experiences is becoming increasingly valuable for building trust and therefore developing resilience. These experiences also create the ability to test and refine ideas in temporary installations before committing to permanent infrastructure. Developments that can engage communities in prototyping and testing future scenarios may find stronger support and acceptance, while helping to cocreate innovative spaces that better serve the needs of the people who live, work and play there.

A playbook for long-term thinking—34

“If design is a con understanding need communities as act our first responsib stop to understan we des

35—The futures we build

nversation, then ds and treating local tive participants is bility. Do we really nd people before sign?”

Sarah Douglas, Director at The Liminal Space

A playbook for long-term thinking—36

The choice is ours.

Your turn.

What if our great-grandchildren had to live with our design choices?

Seven questions born from difficult conversations.

Seven cards to shuffle in when your strategy needs disrupting.

What if agency mattered more than perfection?

Be a play starter

37—The futures we build

Break the algorithm bubble

great What if great design isn’t isn t meant to to be be frictionless?

What if art is as essential a utility as plumbing ?

Champion arts on prescription

What if loneliness is a shared design problem?

Design for collective effervescence

Engage beyond the ribbon-cutting

Embrace emptiness as infrastructure

What if overstimulation is the design flaw?

What if change was built in from the start?

What if opening day wasn’t the finishing line, but the starting gun?

Prototype the future

A playbook for long-term thinking—38

One of the ke designing for not just past p conceptualising 100-year gues ensure the nee who will inhabit this generation i the needs of th

Cat Tully, Co-founder and MD at

39—The futures we build

ey priorities is future needs, patterns, and g the idea of the st. We need to eds of someone t the space after is met alongside he current one.

t School of International Futures

A playbook for long-term thinking—40

Contributors 41—The futures we build

Facilitators

Gem Barton Academic and Author, Reader in Design Pedagogy and Head of superFUTURES at the Royal College of Art, Founder at Office of Speculative Spatial Design (O-SSD)

Temujen Gunawardena Live Event Illustrator

Annie Auerbach Co-Founder at Starling Strategy and Author of FLEX: Reinventing Work for a Smarter, Happier Life

Adam Chmielowski Co-Founder at Starling Strategy

Marie Stafford Global Director at VML Intelligence

Sarah Douglas Director at The Liminal Space

Filippo Cuttica Design and Futures Director, Co-creator of The Futures Bazaar: A Public Imagination Toolkit

Chance Marshall Creative Psychotherapist and Author of How to Grow Through What You Go Through

Elisa Cecilli Strategic Foresight – Senior Associate at Perkins&Will and Portland

Special Guests

Andrew Curry Director of Futures at School of International Futures

Thank you to everyone who participated in the roundtables and helped shape the thinking, including contributors from: AKOU Arup Artistic Statements Atelier of What’s Next Avison Young Battersea Power Station Beek Studios Brave Corporation Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) Cardiff University Chatham House Connected Places Catapult EY Studio + Ficta Studio Healthcare Infection Society Heathrow Airport Hilton Group IDEO International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) ING Media IOCOSE Jason Bruges Studio Kevin Haley Studio LDA Design Legal & General Leisure Development Partners London Borough of Tower Hamlets Longevity Partners

Mott MacDonald MTArt Agency New Working Class National Health Service (NHS) OLO Ostara OUTCOMIST Placemaking AI Premier League RAD London - Royal Albert Docks Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) School of International Futures Self Space Somerset House Starling Strategy 2024/2025 superFUTURES students Town Hall, Camden The Liminal Space The Wellbeing Alliance Thomson Reuters University College London UK Government Policy Lab University of Bath University of Westminster Vivid Futures VML Whybrow Studio WRKPLC

Abi Thompson Adam Strudwick Andrew Mcmullan Anne O’Shaughnessy Asif Din Bri Langtry Charlotte Kavanagh Ellie Sharpe Gonzalo Vargas Ibrahim Ibrahim Jo Wright Justin Starck Lara Baillargeon Lewis Allen Linzi Cassels Lisa Pike Liz McShane Mads Taylor Marcela Escobar Mijail Gutierrez Sarah Drake Selina Boufidis Thomas Hardin Valerie Tam and the SIGNALS team Design: Ruby Kerr and Jon Clements Trends Analysis: Cheshta Kela

About us Perkins&Will, an interdisciplinary, research-based architecture and design firm, was founded in 1935 on the belief that design has the power to transform lives. Guided by a philosophy called Living Design, the firm is committed to creating a holistically healthy, more sustainable world. Architizer named Perkins&Will the world’s Best Sustainable Firm in 2023, and Metropolis named it Firm of the Year in 2022 for its industry leadership in advancing climate action and social justice. Fast Company named Perkins&Will one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in Architecture three times, and in 2021, it added the firm to its list of Brands That Matter - making Perkins&Will the first architecture practice in the world to earn the distinction.

With an international team of more than 2,500 professionals, the firm has 33 studios worldwide, providing integrated services in architecture, interior design, branded environments, urban design, and landscape architecture. Industry rankings consistently place the firm among the world’s top design practices.

Portland is a London-based strategic design consultancy specialising in the creation of future-ready places, brands, and experiences. For over 30 years, the studio has helped clients around the world – from cities and cultural districts to retail destinations and transit hubs – reimagine how people live, move, shop, and connect.

Combining deep insights with bold creativity, Portland works at the intersection of design, strategy, and storytelling to transform complex challenges into visionary, human-centred environments.

The consultancy is part of the Perkins&Will global network.

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